Nonlinear beam splitter in Bose-Einstein-condensate interferometers

A beam splitter is an important component of an atomic/optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Here we study a Bose-Einstein condensate beam splitter, realized with a double well potential of tunable height. We analyze how the sensitivity of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer is degraded by the nonlinear particle-particle interaction during the splitting dynamics. We distinguish three regimes, Rabi, Josephson and Fock, and associate to them a different scaling of the phase sensitivity with the total number of particles. © 2006 The American Physical Society.